Portraying intersectionality on the silver screen is often difficult work. Everyone’s life is a collage of intersecting, and sometimes clashing identities. Cinema for the most part is forced to cut short some of the identities and their effects on the people, whether it be due to narrative constraints, run time, or maintaining a large number of characters. In the case of cinema that focus character studies, often the filmmakers make the decision to focus on one of the identities and leave the rest behind the curtain.

But there are some films that try to bring all of their intersecting identities without discriminating one or the other identities in the process. This essay will look at a few films and media where they explicitly discuss the complex lives of the people without talking about their identities in the form of dialogue. Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), Hiroshi Ando’s Blue (2002), Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015), Saya Yamamoto’s & Mitsuro Kubo’s Yuri on Ice (2016), and Rikiya Imaizumi’s His (2020) will be looked at, and the essay will try to discuss as to why they are better at representing the lives of people, especially queer people, in the cinematic landscape.

Current Issues Plaguing Cinematic Portrayals of Queerness

One of the main issues with queer representation in the modern media is the simplification of the queer people’s lives with just their queerness. Every other aspect of their identity takes a backseat, or is not given any relevance at all. For example, the only relevance of one of the major side characters who is queer in the series Never Have I Ever (2020), is to fulfil the coming out narrative. And this is by no means an isolated incident in queer representation on screen.

Although essential and influential in their own ways, films like Love, Simon (2015), focus only on the coming out narrative and the turmoil that the queer people experience during those times. But these issues are less pronounced in some of the newer films such as Booksmart (2019), where the queerness of the main character is discussed and given a narrative arc to complete, but it is not the sole focus of the film, but a part of many others.

Another pressing issue with mainstream queer representation is the narrow focus of depicting only gay and lesbian relationships in the media, and stereotyping the queerness of the gay and lesbian experience. The other gender and sexual minorities are given less or no representation at all.

Better Intersectional Queer Representations

Wong Kar-wai famously stated about Happy Together as, “In fact, I don’t like people to see this film as a gay film. It’s more like a story about human relationships and somehow the two characters involved are both men” (Lippe, 1998). Within the narrative, the filmmakers or the characters do not discuss or question their queerness. They have no confusion or the need to come out to anyone. Instead the film discuss a confluence of their identities of being a minority of Hong Kongers in the midst of Buenos Aires, the uncertainty people of Hong Kong felt about their future as Hong Kong was being handover from the British to China after 100 years, the characters’ frustration in being locked up with one partner, or having difficulty finding another, unable to escape from a toxic relationship, race, class and more. The weight of all these identities coming together is felt by both the people embodying them and the viewers as well. Further, in an analysis of the films unconventional portrayal of gay men (with one of the actors being cis-het), Jeremy Tambling writes, “We cannot work within a critical paradigm where it is asked if the actor is sufficiently realistic in a part, because that assumes that the audience already knows what a particular identity looks like - which is to accept the power of ideology and the received idea" (Tambling, 2003).

Hiroshi Ando’s Blue, which shares similarities with Celine Sciamma’s feature debut Water Lilies (2007), portrays an on and off relationship between two women still in high school. The hurdles they have to cover due to living in a queer unfriendly country and province, struggling to maintain their respective relationships with their fellow classmates, friends and family, their trouble with the uncertainty students experience just before graduating, their problems they face when they can’t detach themselves from another person, and so on and so forth. The same can be said about the anime series Yuri on Ice. At no point do they question their queerness, there are no coming out narratives in these stories because they do not feel the need to come out to anyone. Instead these narratives focus on other aspects of their identities - of their respective nationalities, of class, of their chosen profession, etc. Homoeroticism and queerness of the characters are right there on the screen for the audience to observe, but they exist in the subtext as well. One aspect of their identity does not take the spotlight away from the others. Instead we see how they influence each other and make them who they are and the struggles they have to overcome.

His is a recent Japanese film which discusses the lives of two men who used to be together. But at a certain point in their life, one parted ways only to come back many years after with a child. Alongside their queerness, it discusses parenthood, homophobia, the toll of separation, and more. This is the only movie in the essay which depicts the coming out narrative. But unlike the media, His is not exclusively reliant on it. Such it fares well for all the better.

Perhaps the most distinct depiction of queerness comes in Sean Baker’s feature debut Tangerine. The film follows a pair of transwomen sexworkers and a taxi driver who exclusively elicit sexual gratification from transwomen who have not undergone bottom surgery. Their identities of being trans, sexworkers, and the geographic location of Los Angeles, lead a very distinct life from others. Their aspirations of being a singer with the baggage of the identities they carry are given poignant screen time. The taxi driver, whose identities of being an immigrant, patriarchal lead of a cis-het household, closeted queerness all contribute to his character and narrative arc over the course of the film.

Conclusion

Although cinematic depictions of queerness have come a long way since its first depictions on screen, much of the mainstream media focus only on their queer identities, and turn a blind eye on how other aspects of their identity affects the rest and how it privileges or discriminates against them.

Recent films like Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Wild Nights With Emily (2018), Pariah (2011), Girlhood (2014), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), etc. makes noticeable improvements in these aspects of portraying intersectional identities to fruition.